While unremarkable photographically, Mark Luthringer's "Ridgemont Typologies" are each an interesting study in a sort of bland conformity that emerges in many prefabricated, manufactured American buildings and products. As Luthringer puts it in his Artist's Statement, "The typological array’s inherent ability to depict prevalence and repetition make it the perfect technique for examining the excess, redundancy, and meaningless freedom of our current age of consumption."

Columbia University’s proposal to develop the old Manhattanville manufacturing zone of West Harlem over the next two decades is the perfect example of a change that will generate growth and benefit all.

[...]

Of course, town-gown partnerships are not without their stresses and strains, and the relationship between Harlem residents and Columbia has not always been the best. Indeed, I was one of those picketing Columbia back in the 1960s, so I know the history and appreciate the concerns that some Harlem residents may have about the university’s plans.

But we should give each other credit where credit is due, and not lose sight of the ways in which the partnership has benefited both groups and provided hundreds of public health and human service programs, educational and cultural exchanges, and workplace experiences and opportunities.

Sigh. I'm pleased that Dinkins bothered to write up a column under the school of "hey guys, I've had my share of hating Columbia too, but..." but he's still failing to address the thousands of residents who are going to be abruptly displaced once Manhattanville construction begins. I fully agree that there are plenty of long-term benefits, but I'm pretty sure the residents of 3333 Broadway care less about "cultural exchanges" and more about having to find new apartments, new schools for their children, and new transportation routes to work...

Monday, May 28, 2007

Sunday, May 27, 2007

For anyone who lives in the bay area, The Slanted Door is quite possibly the best Vietnamese restaurant I've been to in America -- which is saying a lot, considering how frequently I go out of my way to find authentic Viet cuisine. The food is subtle and exquisite, the atmosphere (located right on the Embarcadero with a splendid view of the Bay Bridge) and architecture are elegant and surprisingly trendy, and the waiters are -- dare I say it? -- actually warm and friendly ... a rare occurrence in Asian restauranting. Try the green papaya salad and the oven roasted Alaskan halibut (above); you won't be sorry.

(After two years, I'm still searching for a good Vietnamese restaurant in the greater New York City area -- if anyone has suggestions, I'm getting desperate.)

Fact Magazine recently ran a series of Doc Martens ads designed by S&S and featuring four punk icons wearing nothing more toga-esque sheets and combat boots. The problem? None of the families/estates of the four deceased musicians -- Kurt Cobain, Joey Ramone, Joe Strummer, and Sid Vicious -- were actually asked for permission before the images (from major stock house Corbis) were used. Once news of the ads reached America, Courteney Love and Mickey Leigh (Joey Ramone's brother) raised a big stink and Doc Martens immediately canceled their contract with Saatchi before issuing a public statement of apology. Said Leigh in his own statement, "And, not that my brother was terribly religious, but the fact that he was Jewish, and this ad is not exactly kosher, makes it that much more inappropriate, inconsiderate and contemptible."

"Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem -- the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible -- his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints. Constraints of price, of size, of strength, of balance, of surface, of time and so forth."

5. The NYTimes has really been producing some brilliant web-only graphics recently; first there was a look at the Met's new Greek and Roman galleries (take a look at those scrolling panoramic views!), and now there's an extensive slideshow up on the reconstruction of Juilliard's Alice Tully Hall. Beautiful!

Friday, May 18, 2007

Really, most of you have the wrong idea. There you are, foraging for crumbs in Central Park or diving for anchovies off the coast of Sri Lanka when you could just as easily be kicking back at Sea World -- taking advantage of soft, generous tourists and stopping by for dinner in the buckets and buckets of fresh fish that are just casually left out every few feet around the entire facility. Who needs survival of the fittest when you can dine with flamingos?

Brazilian graphic designer, typographer, artist, and children's book author Roberto De Vicq De Cumptich has a beautiful website up called Bembo's Zoo, an animated flash accompaniment to his children's picture book of the same name. The premise of the zoo, naturally, is that all of its animals are composed of letters from the classic Bembo typeface (which Stephen Heller explicated enthusiastically and geek-ily in an NYTimes book review, saying that "You do not have to be a type maven to enjoy the conceit of Bembo's Zoo. But it would not be surprising if, after you spend some time with the book, Bembo becomes your favorite typeface."). It's a beautiful little site (the dragon and the turtle are my two favorites, personally), for the typography geeks in all of us.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

I feel like this is a topic that I specifically need to address, given that several of my friends have recently been subjected to severe bouts of internet plagiarism. And when I say severe, I mean that entire blogs, collections of poetry, and photo galleries have been ripped, copied, and passed off as another individual's work.

This is very, very uncool.

Let me make a few things clear:

1. I believe in a Creative Commons share and share alike approach to all intellectual property on the internet. If you want to source my writing or my photographs with attribution, that's perfectly fine by me. In fact, my narcissistic self gets a kick out of seeing my number of Google hits increase (yeah, yeah, I egosurf -- sue me), so attribute away.

2. I strongly feel that anyone who doesn't want any of his or her images or ideas reproduced at all should just keep all such work offline, because honestly -- you're asking a little much of several billion people not to pass around your nonsense if you're sticking it up on the aptly-named World Wide Web.

3. To that end, I don't go to any great lengths to protect my images. They're up on the internet, they're easily saved (can anyone explain to me why people try so hard to prevent others from right click + saving images when there's this handy little tool called a screenshot?!), and they'd be, in theory, very easy to steal.

4. But. If I ever, EVER catch anyone trying to plagiarize my work, the shit will hit the proverbial fan. Even worse -- and this actually happened to someone I know recently -- try to sell my work, and I will come after you with a baseball bat.

2. A new Australian-based publication called Open Manifesto is taking a critical approach to writing about design and visual communication. Their most recent issue simply asks "What is graphic design?" and features answers from artists, professors, and writers from around the world.

3. For any Pentax users, their 40mm prime "pancake" lens (only 0.6 inches long!) is one of the most beautiful little bits of photographic elegance that I've ever seen.

4. Admittedly, given the amount of time I spend blogging I can't exactly fault anyone for having too much time on his or her hands, but seriously, this is just ridiculous.

I've long been a huge fan of JPG Magazine and the idea behind it. Crowdsourcing and all of its resultant projects have always fascinated me, and JPG was an early and efficient implementation of the eager-and-willing internet community's photographic talent. Co-founders and husband-wife duo Derek Powazek and Heather Champ (who also works at Flickr), however, both recently -- and abruptly -- left the magazine. I just recently found out why. I stumbled upon each of their respective posts (Derek's; Heather's) about what catalyzed their departure, and it's a pretty depressing story.

In short, the company's entire history is being re-written (without Derek and Heather, incidentally) and the first six (stunning) issues of JPG have been taken off the site. I don't currently have the PDFs of their first two years of production, but if anyone does and would be willing to e-mail me the files, I'd like to host them off of my site for posterity's sake. Can anyone help?

In the meantime, good luck to Derek and Heather in all future endeavors. I, for one, don't think I'll be uploading any more images to my JPG account any time soon...